Modelling in 1895, the 1930s and the 1950s demonstrated the theoretical possibility of CO2-induced global warming through the “greenhouse” effect. This was not carried out by scientists with vested interests in selling wind-mills and biofuel diesel.

Assuming the measurements of past and present atmospheric CO2 are correct, the amount of CO2 in our atmophere has increased considerably since the beginning of the industrial revolution.

The population of the world and hence energy use has increased dramatically since 1745; the population of the world is rapidly heading to 7 billion, and upwards, and will soon attain a 5-fold increase on the population of 1900.

Is or is not the tundra melting with increasing rapidity and the zero degree isotherm moving north more rapidly than it has done since the industrial revolution began, and more so in the last 40 years?

Do you cross the M25 on foot and blindfold in the hope that a truck will not hit you?

Should there be a probability that assorted anthropogenic greenhouse gases cause or are contributing to global warming, which has been occurring unequivocally since the 1890s, then should we not try to alleviate, mitigate or even prevent the problems it will certainly bring us socially?

All else is irrelevant chatter.

Maybe it’s high time for an audit of climateaudit.org to see just how well the claims made on this blog would stand up to the kind of scrutiny and harassment to which Steve subjects legitimate climate scientists.

Ah, but you see, the difference here is that you CAN audit CA, because everything is open and transparent, unlike the work of most “legitimate climate scientists”.

So let’s see your audit…

I note that in Denmark a state funded scientist has legal obligation of integrity in respect of all his publications, not just the peer- reviewed literature and not just publications produced on paid time.

Bjorn Lomborg fell foul of this law when he published his book “The Sceptical Environmentalist”. He was charged with giving an unbalanced review of the literature in this work, arguing that the sums proposed to be spent would be better spent on alleiving existing problems rather than avoiding contingent, future problems. He was acquitted, but the matter was dealt with by the Committee on Scientific Dishonesty, a state tribunal chaired by a judge.

Given that science is international it might have been helpful if Oxburgh had looked to see what was the best standard in international terms before deciding on a benchmark against which to measure the integrity of the work of CRU. Clearly they have selected the lowest possible standard, certainly lower than that in Denmark and lower than in USA from which much of CRUs funding has originated. This may affect their eligibility for funding from the US government in future.

It would be interesting to ask Phil Jones if he would have used Mike’s Nature trick to hide the decline if he had been subject to Danish law.

Incidentally, in Mann’s submission to Muir he says that his Nature trick was to show the proxy and instrumental data separately and marked and labelled so as to avoid confusion. (examination of the diagram in his diagram in MBH98 neither confirms nor disconfirms this since it appears to have been drawn with smudge sticks, but blown up x 8it is possible to distinguish a clear decline in the proxy data followed by a steeply rising line representing the instrumental data) He doesn’t know of any other case than Jones of proxy and instrumental data being conflated. He cannot explain Jones’s conduct but suggests he may have been minimising the graphic to clarify the message and the decline was omitted to avoid confusing lay people.

Maybe it’s high time for an audit of climateaudit.org to see just how well the claims made on this blog would stand up to the kind of scrutiny and harassment to which Steve subjects legitimate climate scientists.